How to Create Duotones in Photoshop

In today’s Photoshop tutorial we’re heading straight back to the 80s to play with vibrant fluoro colours. It has become a popular trend to convert the colours of modern day photographs into oversaturated fluorescent style hues to create intense sensual images. In this tutorial I’ll show you how to quickly recreate this duotone effect, then …

Yesterday, Richard Hales began an introduction to Black and White images. In conjunction with that, I wanted to present an oldie-but-goodie technique that you can use to spice up your black and white images – you can create a Duotone image. Duotones were originally created to allow the use of two inks (usually black and one other color) to be printed on an offset press as halftones (images made up of tiny dots, like you’d see in a newspaper or magazine). Having two colors instead of one adds a subtle richness to the image. Let’s see how we can do this in Photoshop. If we want to create a duotone image, we have to first start with a black and white image. More, specifically, we need a grayscale image, because only a grayscale image can be converted into duotone with Photoshop. So, use your favorite technique to create your black and white image, and then (using a copy, of course!) flatten the image. Here’s a quick example, starting with this color image:   Using a channel mixer adjustment layer, I create this black and white rendition (you can use any technique you like): Now, we have to prepare the image [...]

Photographs are great for print projects and Web sites, but sometimes you want something a little different. Changing a photo into a duotone makes it look more like an illustration, and a duotone’s simple color scheme can be easier to coordinate with an overall design. Step 1 Click on Figure 1 below to open a larger version in another browser window. Save that image to your computer and name it “before.jpg”. Figure 1. Click on this image to open a larger version you can save to your desktop. This file is in the public domain because it’s from the United States Army’s image database. Step 2 Open “before.jpg” in Photoshop and go to Image > Adjustments > Threshold (Figure 2). Figure 2. Step 3 Click and drag on the Threshold’s bottom slider to adjust its levels (Figure 3). The farther you move the slider to the left, the whiter the image will be. The farther you move it to the right, the blacker the image will be. The key to a successful duotone is to have a good balance between the dark and light pixels. You want the important parts of the photo to show, and good detail and balance [...]